Back To School, Computers, and Sanity

Up-front-ish-ness-ness: If Shakespeare could make up words, then… (analogy fail). I may have received a free laptop from Staples in exchange for an honest, sassy review. My husband will assure you I’m an expert at being honest and sassy.

I thought I had things under control this year.

I bought school supplies slightly earlier than the night before Vivian and William were to start Grade 4.

I didn’t have to pull an all-nighter labelling said school supplies.

For the first year ever, I didn’t buy the wrong notebooks or scrapbooks.

But.

On Tuesday night, I scrolled through my Facebook feed. Post after post of back-to-school photos. I didn’t take a picture of my twins. In fact, I can’t even remember the last time I took a picture of my twins.

Thankfully, though, Vivian and William can now take 8000 pictures a day of themselves.

You see, the good people of Staples (a store I spend 25% of my paycheque because I’m a teacher) saw fit to give me a Samsung Chromebook to try out in exchange for a fair review. “If you hate it, say so,” they said. “If your twins spill juice on it, blog about it.”

This little cutie (it kind of looks like a baby MacBook Air) weighs about the same as three of my toes. It is fast and zippy, kind of like a kid on a sugar high.

Thankfully, I’m a Google user, so adapting to the Chrome interface (or whatchamacallit) was easy. My kids, of course, figured it out even faster.

I was a bit freaked out about the lack of software I was familiar with. No Microsoft Word, no Pages, no iPhoto. But you know what? Within five minutes, I’d downloaded a great word processing program for free at the Google App Store. I’d also found photo editing software that’s more comprehensive that PhotoBooth, so my daughter can turn me into FrankenMom in three short steps.

Now we all fight over the least expensive and newest bit of technology in our house, the Samsung Chromebook. It retails at Staples (in Canada) for $269.96. It’s cheaper in the US, but y’all have healthcare issues you have to pay for, so I guess that’s fair.

Seeing Vivian and William play with their first computer reminds me of my own: a 286 that weighed as much as a dozen Sumo wrestlers. It was complete with a 9-pin dot matrix printer. Nothing reminds me of university like the screech of that puppy at 3 AM and the person below me pounding on his ceiling with a broom, trying to tell me to stop printing my 20-page paper. Oh, the joys of technology, circa 1990.

My most recent favorite piece of technology has to be my Kindle Fire because my 4 y/o niece Mackenzie is really starting to get into reading after I uploaded several interactive books just for her. I couldn’t begin to tell you what my first pc was….an abacus board? Does that count? Lol!

My first computer was a Commodore 64, the one where you had to type in the code for the game before you could play it. It was fantastic, I suddenly miss it tremendously. I also just finished your book and loved every word of it.

All I know about my laptop is that when I turn it on it lets me watch netflix, listen to music and write. I also have a treasured dinosaur cell phone that shames my teenagers. They put paper bags on their heads when I use it in public 🙂

My Ipad. The original model! You know, the one that weighs the same as basket of toes. …and where exactly would you find a basket of toes? and what scenario would you be dealing with? My guess is that you would want to leave the area quickly.